In Cheesecake City, a Quest for the Best

By ED LEVINE

Published: March 17, 2004

IN the cosmology of New York City restaurants, there is no dessert more universal than the cheesecake. There are cheesecake variations playing in Manhattan dining rooms both upscale and down: at Gramercy Tavern, at Big Nick's, at ChikaLicious, at David Burke & Donatella.

There is a strawberry-covered cheesecake on a pedestal at the Greek coffee shop on the corner. There is also one on the special dessert menu at the extravagantly expensive Restaurant Daniel. You can get a cheesecake for dessert at Ruth's Chris Steak House, and at the Red Flame in Midtown.

You can buy chocolate cheesecake in your local supermarket, and in the Whole Foods at the Time Warner Center. There is (Swedish) cheesecake at Aquavit, and (Mexican) cheesecake at the Bright Food Shop in Chelsea, and an attempt (Japanese) at Sui in SoHo.

In a city of constant ethnic flux, cheesecake is itself a constant, offering something for everyone.

A month ago I set out to explore the state of the cheesecake in New York City, and thereby, I hoped, to find the city's best. Thirty days, 30 sojourns across the city, and more than four dozen cheesecakes later, I can attest to the health of our shared cheesecake culture. Opinions about cheesecake are, of course, as multitudinous in New York as its citizens. Tempting as it may be to do, I will not crown a ''best'' cake, but seven of them.

Cheesecake is one of those quintessential New York foodstuffs that in some circles is thought of as unsophisticated. Certainly its name does not roll off the tongue like tiramisù, or tarte Tatin. But cheesecake at its best is a perfect sweet -- a smooth, creamy confection with only a hint of tart.

You read that correctly. Any discussion of cheesecake in New York City must begin with a few stipulations. While Italian and postmodern cheesecakes have their place in the pantheon, the proper New York cheesecake has a simple and unchanging list of ingredients: cream cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla and heavy cream. The result is light as gauze. It also packs the wallop of a professional boxer.

Americans understand this and champion it. When representatives from Junior's restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn appeared on the home shopping channel QVC last Christmas to advertise their wares, they were able to sell 70,000 cheesecakes in 24 hours. And the Cheesecake Factory, a chain of casual restaurants built on a foundation of cheesecake desserts, has the highest sales, per store, of any chain in the country right now, according to Nation's Restaurant News, a trade publication. Fifteen percent of the company's total sales are in desserts, 85 percent of them cheesecakes, or more than $104 million in 2003.

CHOCOLATE swirls occasionally visit a cheesecake. So, too, do cherries, blueberries, lemon curds. It is not heretical to enjoy these jazzy renditions, but they are often paint on the lily.

Italian bakers and bakeries believe in a different sort of cheesecake, one made with ricotta -- which gives their cheesecake a rougher texture. At Veniero's in the East Village they've been making a huge, Sicilian-style rectangular cheesecake for more than 100 years that they sell by the pound. It is surprisingly light, with a crumbly, coarse texture.

There is a similar cake, though with slightly more body, at Monteleone's on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; it's made with three kinds of ricotta. At Pepolino, an Italian restaurant in TriBeCa, Enzo Pezone makes a two-inch-high ricotta tart, which is simple, delicate and delicious. And around Easter, Neapolitan bakers all over the city make a dense, eggy cheesecake called a pastiera, made with grain. Zia Tonia at Buon Italia in the Chelsea Market makes a terrific, deeply custardy version.

And restaurant chefs have also weighed in with nontraditional takes on cheesecake. In fact, the best restaurant cheesecake I've eaten in recent memory is 'Cesca's, in which Tom Valenti, the chef and owner, and Amanda LaBarbera, the pastry chef, smoothed the slight graininess of ricotta with a mascarpone, and served it with a simple orange juice reduction.

At the Strip House on East 12th Street, René Lenger, the pastry chef, serves what can only be called a perfect slab of fine traditional cheesecake; it is five inches high, six inches long and three inches thick. It looks like something from a giant's wedding. Gina DePalma at Babbo in Greenwich Village serves a wonderful pumpkin cheesecake with maple syrup and crème fraîche; it's studded with pieces of pumpkin and macerated raisins, and is as far from a traditional cake as it's possible to get and still be delicious.

At the dessert bar ChikaLicious, an owner and chef, Chika Tillman, makes an uncooked cheesecake out of fromage blanc bathed in heavy cream, and serves it on a bed of ice. This blindingly white-on-white presentation looks like an early Yoko Ono creation. It is cloudlike and downright delicious. And Dona Abramson of the Bright Food Shop and the Mexican Kitchen Market in Chelsea makes a very interesting Oaxacan cheesecake crusted with raw brown sugar; it's served with guava lime sauce. O.K.!